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The musicians silenced in the carnage of the Great War

The First World War killed many brilliant composers — and changed for ever those who survived. Now a Prom remembers them

Richard Morrison

August 16 2014, 1:01am, The Times

Ralph Vaughan WilliamsVaughan Williams Charitable Trust

One of the least examined aspects of the First World War is its effect on music and composers. That is strange. We know a lot about its effect on writers, because the writers themselves tell us. Think of the bleak poetry of Owen, Sassoon, Thomas and Blunden, such classic novels as Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, bitter autobiographical testaments such as Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, and evocative plays such as Sherriff’s Journey’s End and O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie.

Music cannot tell a story in the same literal way. Yet the 1914-18 conflict had as cataclysmic effect on the musical world. And as the Prom concert tomorrow will demonstrate, it left an indelible mark on musical…

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